The workspace I’ve always wanted.

This is gonna be a bit of a short post. I considered just lumping it in with another post, but given that I
A) Have progress photos
B) Am proud of this project
C) Really want to show it off
I can’t not write a post about it.

Growing up, I always was envious of my dad’s workshop. Everything you would want when doing a project was right nearby, the best part of working in his shop was the having a nice, clear, solid work surface. During the time I lived in my last apartment, I basically resolved that as soon as it was feasible, I was going to get my own really nice workspace.

Imagine my joy when the new apartment we moved into had a ton of open space in the basement for such a project. The basement isn’t a finished basement, which is totally fine, except for the fact that the floor is really not level. So with the help of my housemate Ethan, we came up with the plans for the “perfect work area”, all built around a nice desk-top we found while moving one of our friends out of their old apartment.

All the pieces arranged so that we can figure out how much wood we need.

So, one trip to home depot later, we have the materials and we start building:

Look at all that lumber.

What a beautiful frame coming together.

Yeah, so earlier I mentioned that the floor wasn’t really level. Even the most level spot in the basement I could find, under the stairs, was still roughly 5 inches off level from corner to corner. So utilizing the years I spent building booths in CMU’s parking lots, I cut some legs and in no time we had a nice level frame. On that frame, we put down some 1/2” ply and then some carpet squares that were on sale at the local reclamation place “Construction junction”.

All I know about leveling I learned from booth.

Gotta have a good floor.

Raw plywood sucks, so we instead we get old office carpeting.

Now that there is a nice carpeted platform, it’s time to build a sturdy electronics workbench. The design I had in mind was an “L” shape with a top shelf for measurement equipment. The final product turned out exactly as I had planned, but there weren’t as many progress pictures as I had planned due to my excitement during building it.

Step one, draw some circles

Step two, draw the rest of the f***ing owl

It’s been roughly 6 months since I built the bench and it has been an amazing place to sit down and work, exactly what I was hoping for. My only issue these days is keeping it tidy:

Cleanliness. Not really a priority mid project.

Keep an eye out for future posts in the coming week as I continue to catch up on my blog backlog.

-Dillon